In an attempt to contribute to the improvement of awareness, interest, understanding and insight into basic astronomy and build appreciation of and pride in South Africa’s history of astronomical activity and achievements The South African Agency for Science brings you the Astro Quiz 2017.

With only a week until the first Round of the Quiz, students can brush up on competition rules as well as their knowledge of the universe below.

COMPETITION RULES

The following rules should be adhered to, for the competition:

The quiz events will be held in the form of a knock-out quiz.

Each school will enter one team of four Grade 7 learners.

The schools will be responsible to get their team to the quiz venue.

The quiz will start at 14h00 on the designated day.

Each school will designate at least one but not more than two teachers to manage the project and act as coach for the school’s team. Coaches may not participate in answering questions.

Only the participating teams and their coaches will attend the quiz sessions. The school may, at its own expense, bring groups of learners to support their teams.

Learners participating may not take resource material into the quiz venue.

Teams may discuss the answers quietly among themselves.

Schools will compete to answer a set of 30 questions in each round. All schools answer the same questions.

Eventually one team per centre goes through to the finals.

No question papers/questions should be left with the learners, teachers or schools for rounds 1 - 4.

12. Round 1 was held on Friday, 26 May 2017:

The top scoring 33 teams have progressed through to Round 2.

13. Round 2 to be held on Friday, 28 July 2017:

Question papers will be emailed to the school at approximately 12h00 on the day of the quiz.

Each team is given a question and answer sheet. The teams are given a fixed period of 60 minutes to answer the questions. Each team sits at a table and they work as a team to complete the questions. Only one answer per question may be marked as correct.

Soft pencils should be used to mark the answers. Incorrect answers may be erased and a new answer marked clearly. There should be no possible misunderstanding as to which the marked answer is, otherwise no marks will be given for that question.

When time is up, the response sheets are collected and scored. The top scoring answer sheet for each school should be faxed to the Scifest Africa office by 15h30 on the day of the quiz.

The top scoring 24 teams will go through to Round 3.

In the event of a tie, where a number of teams achieve the same score and where only one or a few of them can go forward to the next round, the tying teams are given five additional questions to answer. The top scoring teams are then selected. In the event of a further tie, the tie-breaking process is repeated.

14. Round 3 to be held in Grahamstown on Friday, 25 August 2017:

Each team sits together at a table.

Each question is projected onto a screen, via a PC and data projector.

The teams have cards labeled 1 to 4.

The questions are multiple choice questions.

As each question is posed, the teams make their decision about the correct answer and hold up the appropriate card.

Facilitators record their answers on scoring sheets

At the end of the quiz, all corrects answers are tallied.

The top 8 teams in each cluster go forward to Round 4.

In the event of a tie, additional questions are posed to the tying teams only, on a sudden death basis.

As soon as one team falls behind on correct answers, it is knocked out.

This process continues until a selection can be made of teams that will go forward

15. Round 4 (Centre finals) to be held in Grahamstown on Friday, 25 August 2017:

The last eight teams compete.

A winning team and a runner-up are chosen at each centre.

16. Round 5: (National Finals):

The winning team in each province will travel to a designated venue as arranged and funded by SAASTA for the finals.